Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Fish and fowl. Beef and broccoli. Ham and... uh... hydrangeas. I'm about to take you on another exciting adventure through the world of power supply reviewing. Today's review sample comes to us from Seasonic and is the X Series 1250 watt unit. You may remember back in my review of the Platinum 1000W unit that I said I wasn't sure whether or not Seasonic would ever be able to top that model. I mean, that unit averaged only 0.3% regulation in the main series of tests.

I mean, come on. You'd have to come in with perfect voltage regulation on one or more rails to top that kind of performance. This unit is 250 watts bigger, which makes the task even harder. I just don't see it happening on this unit. But, we'll give it a chance, won't we?

First, let's have a look at the box marketing. I'm anxious to get to the load testing, so I'll just make Mr. Fuji do all the work.

Nothing new about this. The Platinum unit had this very same marketing point on the box. The interesting thing is that many other OEMs are now using this approach as well. My Enermax Maxrevo 1500W review sample for instance was laid out the same way, and you will recall that platform is now just about dominating the field of 1500W units lately. The idea works, obviously.

Again, not much is new here. I do find myself wishing Seasonic would increase that warranty period just a bit, to keep up with other companies now offering seven year warranties, but that's really a minor nitpick. Any good design these days is going to outlast a 5-7 year warranty period. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you have a well built unit last past the first year, you won't be needing that warranty. Usually, when problems come up, they come up sooner rather than later.

Try to realize the truth: there is no spoon. There is only a fan. With blades that happen to be merely spoon shaped.

While many companies are already going for 80 Plus Platinum at this power level, Seasonic has chosen to stick to Gold for this unit. Actually, I think that's a good plan. I mean, look at the Platimax 1350W and Toughpower XT 1275W units. I mean, yeah they perform pretty well, but look at the cost... literally. These are not very affordable units. Sure, you'll have higher efficiency, but look at how long you have to run the unit to make up the cost difference. No, I don't mind Seasonic's going for Gold efficiency at all. Provided it can manage it, that is. We'll see about that later.

Looks like we get the same kind of fan control we saw with the Platinum, too. There's a semi-fanless mode and a fully fanned mode, selectable by a switch. I'll have to see in the cold tests where that fan kicks in.

There's not a lot of marketing anywhere else on the box. This side merely shows us a load table as well as some other facts about the unit. A connector complement table is present as well.

For high end and gaming application. Green innovation powers my life. I knew green was my favorite color for a reason.

Just in case English isn't your first language, the bullet points are all repeated in various languages here. But no Klingon. Or Pig Latin. Or Swahili. Or Worzelese. Or... ow! Ok, I'll stop.

Hey, you know what would have been cool? Jon Pertwee breaking into a spontaneous Worzelese speech in the middle of Doctor Who. And by "cool," I really mean "disturbing."

Time to unpack! I see a power supply in a velvet bag, User's guide, bag of accessories, warranty info sheet, and a bag full of modular cables.